Wherever natural or manmade disasters strike, animals become victims too. Animal victims of the earthquake disaster in Haiti have been found to desperately need help and animal welfare groups are joining forces to come to their aid.
Those efforts start off 2010 as we look back on 2009 and how animals fared.
Most state anti-cruelty laws exempted farm animals from basic humane protections. But, over the past decade, some states took action to outlaw common factory farming cruelties. Two states passed laws to ban battery cages (CA, MI); five passed laws to ban veal crates(AZ, CA, CO, ME, MI), and seven passed laws to ban gestation crates (AZ, CA, CO, FL, OR, ME, MI)
Anti-confinement legislation is planned In New York and Massachusetts in the coming year. And on the federal level, Farm Sanctuary will be pushing the Obama Administration to end the slaughter of downed pigs and other animals for food.
The Obama administration has locked in a federal ban on slaughtering downed cattle for human food. A similar ban should be enacted to apply to pigs and other species.
At the end of the last decade, for the first time in generations, the USDA’s year-end records showed that the number of animals killed for food in the U.S. dropped.
In “Eating Animals,” acclaimed author Jonathan Safran Foer, urged us, if we don’t become vegans or vegetarians, to at least give up eggs. (unless you raise your own hens).
Many puppy mills have been shut down throughout the US in the past year. And as long as puppies are big business for pet shops, and sale via the internet many more will hopefully be shut down in 2010 including those in central New York. After nearly a decade of campaigning by IDA activists, the Scamp’s pet store chain, peddler of puppy mill puppies, closed its doors for good.
Some other efforts that will continue in the coming years are: banning the sale of raccoon dog fur in all 46 Lord & Taylor stores; blocking a federal policy allowing canned hunting of endangered species; halting the false advertising of cruelly produced foie gras as a humane product; requiring the Department of Agriculture to provide key information concerning research on animal pain and distress; halting the slaughter of endangered wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; shutting down horse slaughter plants and fighting to stop long-distance transport of live horses to their deaths in Mexico and Canada.
In 2009, countless animals were saved from Advanced Trauma Life Support programs and medical school labs. The Great Ape Protection Act got more than 100 congressional co-sponsors. The construction of a primate-breeding facility in Puerto Rico was stopped.
Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine reported that under the BEST Practices Act, H.R. 4269, the military’s use of live vervet monkeys to demonstrate the effects of a chemical weapons attack would be ended immediately. The use of live animals in combat trauma training would be phased out by 2013 and replaced by superior training methods.
A report by the Animal Legal Defense Fund says that Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, and North Dakota “are the five best states in the country to be an animal abuser.” The annual report, the only one of its kind in the nation, ranks all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories for the general comprehensiveness and relative strength of their respective animal protection laws.
In Defense of Animals (IDA) celebrated several major court victories, including a monumental Freedom of Information Act victory after a 7-year court battle with the USDA and the terrible animal abuser Huntingdon Life Sciences..
Defenders of Wildlife reports that “ climate change, overharvesting, invasive species and frightening new diseases are devastating wildlife around the globe A fifth of the world’s mamals are under the threat of extinction. Some scientists’ estimates state that nearly 40% of the world’s species are endangered.
Their report goes on to say that nearly 18 years ago, the U.S. provided vital leadership in negotiating the Convention on Biological Diversity — a vital international agreement to protect and preserve the world’s rich diversity of life. Now the U.S. and tiny Andorra are the only countries in the world that have failed to ratify this important accord. In 2010 — the International Year of Biodiversity — the U.S. has an opportunity to reestablish its role as a global leader in wildlife conservation. “
